About Us

It’s something we never saw coming… One day we had our happy little boy, not a worry in the world, then suddenly, out of nowhere came anxiety… A crippling disorder that stopped us in our tracks. What once was easy became difficult, from going to school to visiting with friends… Birthday party’s, school trips, after school clubs… Impossible. One day he was running out the door to walk to school on his own… ‘not till the crossing lady starts’ I would have to say… Then, what felt like the very next day, he couldn’t go.

My name is Emma, and I am the mother of an anxious child.

I spent the best part of 6 months coercing and begging my sick child to ‘just go to school’ whilst trying to get to the bottom of why he couldn’t go, fighting with his school for support, and filling out the applications to remove him. I didn’t see how going to school would fix his fear of going to school, when clearly we wouldn’t have asked him to run had he broken his leg.

I thought he needed time to heal. Time to get strong. And time to find his way back to being happy.

We are a family of four, so as you can imagine all our relationships were affected. Our marriage was tested, our littlest struggled to get the attention he needed, and even our friendships outside the family unit became strained at times.

Another 6 months on, and we have waded through the worst of it. I have read and read and read about anxiety, then realising you get what you focus on, started reading about Happiness.

Happiness Now has come from this experience and is about sharing our story, providing the information that helped us most, and sharing the practical tools I have designed to help children and adolescents (and anyone really) Find their ‘everyday happy’.

We may have muddy feet from our long journey, and are still having ups and downs, but the ups are higher, and the lows no where near as low. AND we’re doing it all with big smiles on our faces 🙂

Disclaimer

I am not a PHD holder, psychologist, psychiatrist, or expert in any sense of the word. I am simply a parent with personal experience…

(I’d like to thank the PHD holders, psychologists, psychiatrists and happiness researchers for providing the personal advice and amazing articles that have helped our family learn, grow and recover through this)